Taverner... What a mammoth undertaking.. 1 Opera, 1 Conductor - 2 Acts, 8 days, 11 soloists, 56 hours of rehearsal... 98 players, 112 choir members, 1 performance and 1 broadcast - to the world..... but it is worth it... I think unashamedly... YES!
What a thought provoking masterpiece.. the more you look at it, the more it makes you not only delve head first into Taverner's 16th century world, but also of the late 1950's when it was written (before the liberalising 60's).. It also it makes you think of religion and the persecuted and persecutor, and reformation and ransacked monasteries, lives destroyed and rapidly changing times.. in rifely political times. How things don't change. The counter point and music in the piece, and the way it changes from one half to the next... and shifts through the opera... subtle and clever.
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I'm thinking of beginnings, and thinking back to Runnicles' inaugural Mahler 1. The natural world looms large in this symphony - that's what he intended, he said so on the tin - pastoral scenes, storms, folk dances, birds, usual nice stuff. It opens with a dawn scene. But the very first sound reveals a strangely unfamiliar world. Mahler is wandering into new territory. There's something more here than just the quiet of early morning - maybe it's the dawn of time itself........murmurings emerging from the silence of eternity. The dawn of time! To melancholics like me that phrase is a siren call, beckoning me towards the unknowable, the mysteries of creation. The inquisitive wanderer is lured away from familiar paths. We're only a few notes into the piece, and, for me, Mahler's music is conjuring up visions. Did he intend that as he was composing? Was he just following a serendipitous musical idea, or did he plan to lead us further afield? Was it that the first few random notes that came into his head led his imagination into this philosophical countryside, or did he set out trying to find notes to fit his agenda? Did the song create the idea? Other composers have wandered down these paths. Jonathon Harvey's Speakings (with which we went on to win a gramophone award) visits similar scenery. One of my favourite 'dawn-of-time' pieces is also recent: Tan Dun's Music Theatre II. Tan Dun had groups of woodwind players perched around the high balconies of the Albert Hall, making wonderful bird calls, squawking and twittering on their mouthpieces - I'm surprised that the resident greylags across the road in Hyde Park didn't scatter off in a panic. Melody gradually emerges from the chaos - all the while, a sustained low D, the eternal 'aum', the sound of creation, pervades the whole piece. All of us got to sing this creation act - players, the conductor, and audience alike! (During our first attempt to play it at the Albert Hall there was an inauspicious power cut - we had to empty the hall. We played it the following year - but only to those who managed to get there despite a tube strike.)
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If you haven't read the Big Noise stuff on this website, and followed links to find out all about it - please do so now. You might've noticed that the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra and the Venezuelan 'EL Sistema' have been getting me all worked up recently. Conductors, from Abbado and Rattle downwards, have been saying that this is the most important thing to happen in music.....ever. Well, who am I to disagree? Concert managers are drooling - Dudamel and the Bolivars are the hottest classical music ticket......ever. What's it all about? Have you read about it, watched the many videos on YouTube? This week Jose Antonio Abreu, the Sistema founder, receives the Glenn Gould award in Toronto, to the accompaniment of the Bolivar orchestra's visit - concerts and city-wide workshops like nobody has ever seen. Just in case you don't read that link, I'd underline that Abreu has cajoled them to treble the prize money, and spend it all on instruments for the kids in Venezuela. Four members of the orchestra, the Millenium Quartet, visited us at the Daphnis and Chloe concert a couple of weeks ago. They were in Stirling for the week, working with the Big Noise children and teachers in Raploch - ending with the first international Sistema Scotland conference. I hope you're beginning to build up a picture of what's going on. Meeting the Venezuelan players, and watching them play, has got me all worked up again - fizzed up with the infectious fun that the children were so obviously having. Adults and children were all mixed together for the conference lunch, during which the children were sparking with enthusiasm for their musical games - I had to quickly loosen up and join in with them.
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